It was Michi who saved her, dragged her away and spun her around, wearing the kick across her shoulder blades. Yukiko felt as if she’d been hit by lightning, slamming her and Michi out through the cell door and into the wall opposite.
She heard a wet crunch, a ragged scream, blinking the tears from her eyes as the Inquisitor smashed a samurai into the floor as if he were made of rags. Another samurai threw his arms around the Inquisitor’s throat, and again there was only smoke, roiling and midnight-shaped, slipping through his grip, past Misaki’s gleaming razors and out into the hallway. And there he stood again, all too real, eyes shot through with bloody red, reaching toward Yukiko like something from a nightmare.
“Yōkai-kin,” he breathed. “She awaits…”
Michi’s foot connected with the Inquisitor’s groin like a redlining goods train. It was the kind of kick that made one’s testicles throw up their hands and move to a monastery in the Hogosha mountains. It was the kind of kick that made orphans of a man’s grandchildren.
Her elbow spun him, knocked the breather from his face. He staggered, the girl’s knuckles passing clean through the place his throat used to be, only vapor remaining. The Inquisitor coalesced behind her, hands reaching for her neck quick as lies. And Yukiko pulled herself up the wall, blood spilling from her nose as she reached inside his head.
And she squeezed.
The Inquisitor gasped, the last of his lungful drifting from his lips as he clutched his temples. General Ginjiro barreled through the cell door and collided with him, pistons and gears whining as his fingers closed about the man’s wrists. The Inquisitor thrashed, tried to break the hold, twisting and kicking as his form shivered. The little man looked down at his breather swinging loose, wailing as Ginjiro wrapped him up in a bear hug.
“Don’t let him breathe any more smoke!” Yukiko cried.
The Inquisitor slammed his head into Ginjiro’s, face-first onto the jagged tusks of the oni mask. There was a sickening crunch, a spattering sound. The little man smashed his head into the iron mask again, its tusks painted with red and tiny fragments of bone. Yukiko put her hands to her mouth, Ginjiro crying out as the Inquisitor cracked his head a third time, a fourth, bone crunching, blood spraying. Other samurai seized the man’s head to stop him inflicting further damage on himself, the hallway now filled with the smell of blood and awful, wet screaming.
The Inquisitor had put out his own eyes.
“Gods above,” Michi breathed.
“I will see you there, Yōkai-kin!” The Inquisitor spat blood. “I will wait for you!”
“Izanagi’s balls, get her out of here!” Ginjiro bellowed.
Michi and Misaki each grabbed an arm and hauled Yukiko away. She felt sick, head swimming, nose bleeding, ears ringing with the Inquisitor’s screams. Ruined eyes, face torn and cracked, twisted with madness. She found herself reaching out with the Kenning, feeling for the two sparks of warmth in her belly. Reflexive, terrified, her thoughts echoing with his words.
“The little ones are already here, after all.”
She tried to swallow, her mouth dry as ash.
“Perhaps they can play with yours…”
15
SEED
The looking glass saw right through her.
Yukiko stood naked before it, lost in her own reflection. Skin as pale as Iishi snow, long slender limbs, black hair spilling in soft rivers over her shoulders. Turning sideways, she searched the profile of her belly as if it contained the answer to every riddle, every question. She ran her hand down her stomach, feeling the curve of skin and muscle. It was beginning to swell.
She could see them now, as well as feel them.
A tiny island of herself, locked behind the wall she’d constructed in the Kenning. A fire inside her, waiting outside the barrier in her head. She lowered it now, pain flaring, like a flaming ice pick rammed into her skull. But in the midst of it, she could feel everything. Swallows in the midnight garden, vermin crawling the sewers, Michi’s puppy dreaming. Buruu nestled on the rafters above her head, a growing guilt gnawing his insides. Kaiah soaring overhead, praying for thunder, her head filled with tears and portraits painted in blood. Little broken shapes. Black feathers and screams.
The people. So many people. Guards nodding at their posts and generals muttering over maps and blacksmiths sweating at forges and peasants filling sandbags and mothers comforting children. Daimyo Isamu, Yoshi, Akihito, Hana, all tangled and confused and impossible, but different enough for her to recognize their shapes. And finally, the little ones inside her. No thoughts to speak of, just the heat and pulse of womb’s dark. Their whole world. In her.
In me.
So many. Too many. Her head throbbing, warmth and salt on her lips.
Stop.